Silent Night (7 page)

“Y
OUR NAME REALLY
even Miranda?” Tucker blasted the cruiser’s heat and directed his gaze to the rearview at the lady who, a few days ago, had been the first woman to catch his eye in months. Now she was a potential criminal in his town—whether Father Anatole pressed charges or not. She’d still been breaking and entering.

“Yes.” She met his gaze in the mirror, and he quickly turned his concentration to driving through the haze of white sticking to the windshield before being flicked away by the wipers. The cycle continued over and over again, nearly hypnotizing as the squeak of the rubber blades shaved the snow from glass.

He could hear her scooting around on the vinyl seats and risked another glance. She pressed her head to the window and closed her eyes. He pulled into his drive, jumped out and opened the gate, then got back in. She still had her eyes closed as he drove around his house toward her cottage.

He was tired, and his gaze strayed again to the rearview. Her mouth slightly parted and her breath fogged the window. She was just as hypnotizing as the snow, but at least looking at her was waking up his body.

“Pretend to sleep all you want, Miranda. You’re not leaving this car until I have answers.”

She said nothing.

It was almost a blessing when Lisa’s voice crackled through the radio and shattered the silence. “You there, Chief?”

He pressed the button on the mic clipped near his shoulder. “I’m here.”

“I know it’s late, but I need you up at Old Walt’s place on North River Road.”

“He die or something?” Wouldn’t be a surprise. The crotchety old man was older than God. Tucker glanced at the radio clock. It was just after midnight and all he wanted to do was climb into bed and get a little shut-eye. But when a department consisted of a total of five uniforms during off-season and a mere twenty this time of year, late nights weren’t unusual.

“Since he made the call, I doubt it. But someone did. Said there’s a body on his property.”

Tucker let that settle over him for a moment. “Hiker?”

They didn’t get a lot of hikers this time of year, but he supposed it was possible someone had gotten too friendly with the Great Smoky Mountains wildlife.

“Don’t think so. Walt made it sound a bit more ominous than that.”

His mind flickered to the bloody scene behind the library, to Ricky Schneider. His stomach clenched. Was it possible he’d finally found the missing kid?

“He sounded pretty freaked out, Chief,” Lisa’s voice said. “I’ve already called Andy. He’ll be meeting you there.”

“What exactly did Walt say?”

“Just that there was a body on his property. Said it looked like some kind of religious ritual or something.”

Miranda gave a soft “No . . .” from the backseat. He glanced at her, saw her mouth agape, her body rigid.

He pressed the mic again. “ETA ten minutes max. Let Andy know.”

“Roger that.”

Tucker turned to look at Miranda. Her teeth worked over her thumbnail as she stared blankly back at him. “You all right?”

“Does this . . .” He could hear her swallow before she cleared her throat. “Does this sort of thing happen often here?”

“We get our share of hiking accidents.”

“In this weather? That woman . . . she said it was religious.”

“It’s Christmastime in a town called Christmas, Miranda. There’s religion everywhere.”

As Miranda tried to open the locked door, the door handle popped. He climbed out and opened it for her. “This isn’t over,” he said, helping her from the car. “Tomorrow, you will tell me who you are and what you’re really doing here.”

Miranda looked up at him, her face pale and her lips quivering. She pulled out of his grasp and stepped back, allowing him room to climb back into the car.

“I mean it,” he said. “Don’t even think about disappearing.”

She gave a faint nod as he climbed back into the squad car and headed toward North River Road and Walt’s place.

T
HE MINUTE
T
UCKER
pulled out of the drive, Miranda bolted back down the drive toward the side streets and the garage where the Rover was parked. “North River Road, North River Road,” she chanted, forgoing the elevator and taking the stairs two at a time.

She threw the tarp off the Rover, unlocked it, and shoved the tarp inside before jumping behind the wheel. She quickly punched the street name into her GPS. Thankfully, the system found the road and mapped directions. Slamming the door, she squealed out of the garage. Her heart was thudding, drowning out the sounds outside her closed window.

A body. Religion. It was all she could do to stay focused on the snowy road and not plow into any of the shiny lampposts flickering green and red as the electronic voice told her to take a left turn at the next light.

Her mind played over all the photos she’d collected. Three men, each killed on a Sunday, every one of them posed in a religious setting. It couldn’t be happening again. Anatole had gotten away with murder. He’d fled Ohio a free man. He had no reason to start killing again.

“In a quarter mile, turn right on North River Road,” the voice told her from the dash.

She replayed the conversation she’d overheard. Had Lisa mentioned whether the body was male or female? She couldn’t remember. White-knuckling the steering wheel, she turned onto North River Road, her knees rubber as she tapped the brakes and tried to get her bearings. Which way from here? She took a left. Found a dead end. Backtracked. At the end of the other side of the road, she saw the faint red hue of taillights bouncing away from her.

She chased after them.

T
HE
D
UVET
R
IVER
appeared through the black trees, and the cruiser bounced along the rutted track Old Walt called a driveway. Tucker pulled to a stop behind the squad car already parked beside a rickety toolshed where Walt’s watchdog furiously barked at Bowen.

Tucker popped the trunk, grabbed his duffel bag, and worked his way through the snowdrifts to where his lieutenant stood with Walt, trying to calm the hound.

“’Bout time you got here.” The pipe clamped between Walt’s yellowed teeth bobbed as he spoke. He was an old man who looked closer to ancient, with the personality of the Grinch’s first cousin. Gray hair hung over his eyes and bags of skin drooped from his chin like the jowls of his old dog. “Called that dispatch of yours three times and it still took over an hour for anyone to get here.”

“Twenty minutes,” Andy corrected with a nod of greeting in Tucker’s direction.

Walt glared at the lieutenant. “If you had gotten your ass up here the first time I called, you might have seen whoever put that body on my lake.”

“Let’s get to it,” Tucker muttered, too tired to deal with the ornery old shit.

Andy pulled his flashlight from the hook on his belt and let Walt lead the way a short distance down a little-used path. When the river came into view, he stopped and trained the beam on a clearing in the snow, protected from the weather by a canopy of trees that acted as a natural roof. Tucker’s gaze followed the light until it stopped at the thickest clump of trees.

A body lay slumped against the base of the largest oak and Tucker was immediately transported to his past in Chicago. Every day, a new body, a new broken family.

Anger boiled in him that he was facing the same thing here, in Christmas. Whether foul play was involved, he could tell from the placement of the body that he wasn’t dealing with a natural death. The best he could hope for was a suicide, because otherwise, he was likely dealing with murder. Possibly Ricky’s murder.

As they made their way closer, Walt stayed back. “Ain’t going near it again. Still can’t get that stink off me.”

“You touched it?” Tucker snapped. He pulled a box of gloves from his duffel bag and handed a pair to Bowen before sliding a pair on himself.

Walt yanked the pipe from his mouth and thrust it at him. “Not like I was expecting a corpse right here by Trapper’s favorite pissing spot, now was I? Didn’t see the blood. Tried to shake him awake.”

Tucker sighed. So much for an unmolested crime scene. He pulled his camera from the duffel, stuffed a few plastic evidence bags into his pockets, and began snapping photos of everything in the vicinity.

Footprints, most likely Walt’s, zigzagged around the trees and stopped beside the body before retreating back the way they’d come. Paw prints circled the scene far enough away that it looked as though even the old guard dog hadn’t wanted to get too close.

Tucker knelt beside the body. Andy squatted across from him. The body was clothed in a silky shirt, buttoned to his chin, an awkwardly knotted tie, and a suit. Every piece of his clothing white. Blood soaked the collar at his throat and dark hair hung over his eyes. His head had fallen forward, hiding his face from Bowen’s light, and in his hands Tucker saw what had made Walt mention religion. A huge crucifix, easily six inches long, lay clasped between his hands against the man’s stomach, and a Bible lay closed on his lap.

Not suicide.

Tucker’s gut twisted. But it also wasn’t Ricky. He let that thought exhale in a puff of relief.

He picked up a leaf. The splash of red spotting it was tacky, not exactly fresh, but it wasn’t old enough to have dried, either. Andy gently eased the man’s head back, revealing a massive cut around the neck and a very obviously broken jaw.

“Don’t touch him!” Tucker snapped.

Hands in the air, Andy backed away apologetically. “Christ above.” All the color drained from his face. “That’s Michael Levi. The mayor’s son.”

Fuck a duck
. “You sure?”

“Yeah. He looks exactly the same as he did in high school. Haven’t seen him in years. He used to come to St. Catherine’s every Sunday with his family. Jesus.” Andy looked uneasy, and possibly ill. “We don’t really get murders here, Tucker. I’m sure you noticed that. Maybe we oughta bring in the TBI?”

Tucker shook his head. One scene wasn’t going to interest the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “It’s all right. I’ve done this before.” More times than he cared to count . . . even if he’d been out of the game for seven years and felt rusty as hell. “Call Doc Sam. Get her down here ASAP so she can send the body to Knoxville for an autopsy.”

Tucker took pictures of the Bible and crucifix but wouldn’t take them as evidence until the doc had a chance to see the scene as is. He stood and studied the surroundings again. How the hell had someone gotten up here, placed the man’s body against the trees, and gotten out again without leaving so much as a single footprint on the dirt-packed ground surrounding the body?

Michael Levi wasn’t a small man by any means. Easily over six feet tall. Whoever had done this had either been really strong, or would have had to use something to carry the body.

Tucker looked to Walt. “How ’bout you tell me what went down here tonight?”

Walt chewed thoughtfully on his pipe for several seconds. “I let Trapper out to piss about thirty minutes ago and he started raising one hell of a ruckus ’round his pissing tree. Figured he’d caught whiff of a damned tourist who couldn’t read all them no trespassing signs I put out. Grabbed my shotgun and came out to find this.”

“And Trapper didn’t alert you that anyone had been here earlier? No idea when the body was put here?”

“Dog’s hearing’s worse than mine. Nose can’t be beat, but his ears . . . nah, I didn’t hear nothing.” Walt tapped the hound’s head. “Last time I was out here was before supper and wasn’t nobody here then, that’s for sure.”

“What time was supper?”

“’Round six or so.”

“Did you see footprints? Drag marks? Anything else left behind by whoever was here?”

Walt spit. “Look around, Chief. Anything that mighta been here’s already been washed off by tonight’s snow.”

Tucker held tight to his frustration. “I realize that. But there might have been when you found—”

Something rustled in the trees behind them. Tucker lifted his light, shone it on the deep recesses of the copse, directly onto Miranda’s pale face.

Her eyes grew wide, and he could see her preparing to run. But as he stood to go after her, she surprised him by not running away from the scene, but directly toward it.

“Son of a bitch!” Turning, he raced toward her, catching her when she stopped at the tree line. He grabbed her arm and yanked her to his chest. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, I had to—it’s—I needed to see for myself.” She was staring at the body, trembling, ghostly pale. Her words were whispered, and when he spun her to face him, he saw tears in her eyes. “Oh God, no. I think I’m going to be sick.”

He hustled her back toward the path before she could contaminate his crime scene. He held her hair, but turned his back to her, trying to save a bit of her dignity as she deposited the contents of her stomach into the pristine snow.

“Who the hell is she?” Andy stopped beside them.

Tucker ignored him. Miranda wiped her mouth as she turned to face him, tears glistening in her eyes and rushing down her cheeks.

Tucker gave her a slight shake. “What the hell are you doing here, Miranda?”

He tried to read her, but her face gave no explanation for her outburst. Her teeth chattered so loudly that he couldn’t make out her mumbled words. He guided her to the cruiser and popped the trunk, pulled out his spare coat, and slid it over her parka.

“Go home, Andy. No sense in both of us waiting here.”

“Who is she, boss? Want me to take her in?”

“Nah. She’s my problem for now.” He fished inside Miranda’s coat and came up empty. “Where are your keys, Miranda?”

“C-car.”

“And where’d you park the car?”

She didn’t answer. Tucker swore. “She drives a black Range Rover. Find it. Make sure it gets taken back to my place. She’s one of my renters.”

Andy looked confused, one eye narrowed, the other brow raised. “You’re letting her stay?”

“Just do it.” His patience worn thin, Tucker popped open the back door of his cruiser and none too gently placed Miranda inside.

He glanced over his shoulder. “You too, Walt. Get on home. Take Trapper with you. I’ll make sure your property is violated as little as possible.”

The old man spit again and glowered. “I don’t want no reporters sticking their noses ’round here tomorrow, either. You keep this under your belt or there’ll be a lot of journalists with pencils crammed up their asses.”

“Not smart to make threats around an officer of the law. Go on now.”

Walt grumbled his way back toward his house, and Tucker looked down at Miranda. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“Did you know that man, Miranda?”

“No.”

“So you just reacted that way because you saw a dead body?”

“Yes. No. I need a minute to think!”

To hell with that. “Think about what? You followed me to a crime scene and nearly contaminated the shit out of it. The time for games and stories is long past, Miranda. Why the hell are you really in my town?”

Her wide eyes searched his face, and Tucker stood still, watching her, waiting her out. “If you’ll take me to the cottage, I can show you something you might want to see.”

Show him something? “Are you trying to fuck with my head, woman? Show me what?”

She glanced toward the body, invisible now beneath the shadows of trees and night. “Did he have a burn on his face? Between his eyes?”

Other than the broken jaw and sliced throat, he hadn’t yet had time to detail anything about the victim’s face. “Why would you think he did?”

“Just look. If he does, then I’ll know I’m right.”

“Right about what?”

“I need to know.” She held his gaze. “Please.”

Tucker clenched his teeth. “Move your legs.”

She looked as though she wouldn’t obey, then slowly swung her legs inside the car. He slammed the door with more force than necessary.

He left her there and returned to the body. The packed dirt beneath the trees was now becoming muddy from the light layer of blowing snow. He knelt and rested his elbows on his knees, his gut churning as he imagined the forthcoming conversation he was going to have with the mayor. Telling someone his son had been murdered was something he’d hoped he’d never have to do again. That he was going to be the Reaper’s messenger tonight and leave a family bereft was giving him an ulcer.

He would be breaking every damned rule in the book if he touched the body, but he suspected Miranda knew something about all this, and if playing her little game was going to make her speak up, he’d play. For a little while.

The white suit jacket pooled around Michael like a silky blanket, soiled with mud and blood and a few bits of pine straw. Gently, Tucker pushed the hair from the pale face, revealing wide green eyes frozen open. He shone the beam of his light over him.

At first, the only things he saw were the man’s blue-tinged skin and those eyes. He held his arm above his head, changing the position of the light so he wouldn’t have to touch anything more than the strands of hair his fingers had brushed.

And there it was, burned into the center of the man’s forehead. The sign of the cross.

What the hell was going on in his town?